Rhapsody, or Revelation, or Cerberus to the Fireflies

after Nicole Sealey, after Alysia Nicole Harris, after Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon

Originally Published in The Adroit Journal, Issue 45 (April 2023)

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(o)

stinat

(o) stinat

alt text: [Arranged in circles, restarting at the ‘O’s in “ostinato,” displayed nine times as the nine main stars of the constellation Virgo]

It’s a matter of fact: repetition dulls the senses.
Matterfact: I’ll prove it, approximate how many exes
uttered the same thing upon leaving—beautiful
mind—kissing my forehead & dispelling into past tense.
In the void of presence, I thought there was more. Hope
—I prayed; there was more: chains, trunks of my own forest fires; ashen scents, catching, in my throats, each musky regret, rasping reminders that this was all there was. Yes, I begged,
I panted the way Black boys gasp in being choked
& finding God at the end of light.

In the beginning, I would not call me pious;
I would call me country, a backwood muhfugga enjoying
the shadow of their own howling. In the beginning,
I spoke & the dark rebelled. I sat & the dark rebelled,
threatened to extinguish the light from the singular
Brilliance I housed in the jar of my own body. I spoke
& broke open Brilliance—my pen pal, my own scattering conscience in the void of presence—& barked to assume multiplicity. Sure, my mind works as a hive, a clusterfuck
of blinking moments trying to isolate loneliness.

Funny, isn’t it—how even compartmentalize means
separation, means division, & yet, means structuring
against dissonance, to make a wheel of one’s demons
so convincing, they mimic Old Testament angels?
Yes, I’d be right to think I have no place amongst them,
but at a quarter-inch away from ending the epilogue
that some will tell my children of, when it is all done
& there be no more cinders left burning in my throat
to call Love by its name or beckon for Joy in this song,
if You be watching:

1.
Baptize me by the barrel that held my moon
-shine, across from the bucket that I burned
my lovers in, buried my tongue in deep after kissing
their dust & sending them on their way to meet a man
that only promised them a one-room shack
on the East Side of Hell, but swore to them
that there was still room for good boys like us;

2.
Put my pennies in my favorite niggas’ pockets
& send ‘em sailing ‘cross the Jordan,
&, in the event they don’t make it all the way there,
feast; shatter my boys, forward their fragments
to the Other Side, back into the grounds they kept
their paws on, their bellies bloated & striped as Christ
from, & my eyes darkened for, rolling up in praise;

3.
Let my testament be the will to outlast my candles.
Pour me into the mould of a beast that dare be braver,
love harder than I ever did, stronger than the silences
between me & everything I could interrupt, dare live
fuller every moment flying inside my Mason jars,
glowing without knowledge of an ending, but shining
anyway, swearing noisily without regret.

[Arranged as an infinity symbol, intersecting at the “O” of the words “most” & “work”] {Poem section text below}

alt text: [Arranged as an infinity symbol, intersecting at the “O” of the words “most” & “work”]

“The best performers decorate time with the m(o)st striking flashes against a clock. I’d like to be this type of poet, of person. Or, perhaps, that type. Considering pronouns, one demonstrates their proximity to certain qualifiers. I’d like to rest knowing I did my best w(o)rk; made someone believe their time was well-spent, paid their aching distance attention to wrangle the obtainable? Yes. In music, they call this light return on investment a loop.”

The best performers decorate time with the m(o)st striking flashes against a clock. I’d like to be this type of poet, of person. Or, perhaps, that type. Considering pronouns, one demonstrates their proximity to certain qualifiers. I’d like to rest knowing I did my best w(o)rk; made someone believe their time was well-spent, paid their aching distance attention to wrangle the obtainable? Yes. In music, they call this light return on investment a loop.

The best performers decorate time with the m(o)st striking flashes against a clock. I’d like to be this type of poet, of person. Or, perhaps, that type. Considering pronouns, one demonstrates their proximity to certain qualifiers. I’d like to rest knowing I did my best w(o)rk; made someone believe their time was well-spent, paid their aching distance attention to wrangle the obtainable? Yes. In music, they call this light return on investment a loop.

{More of issue 45 of The Adroit Journal}

d’Angelo’s “Send It On” is a song featured in Willie’s Red Aventurine Playlist.